Flock "Safety" and the lack of oversight.

Our Take

Credit to Sick of this Show for keeping the spotlight on something most city councils would rather not discuss in detail: how Flock Safety's automated license plate readers get deployed with minimal public input, thin audit trails, and almost no meaningful guardrails on who can access the data or why. The short format doesn't allow for a deep dive, but the core point lands — this is infrastructure that tracks everyone's movements by default, approved through processes that rarely get real scrutiny until after the cameras are already up.

That's the pattern we see over and over: a police department or city manager signs a contract, a handful of cameras go in, and the public finds out mostly by accident. Oversight, when it exists at all, tends to be reactive rather than built in from the start — no independent audits, no hard limits on data sharing with other agencies, no clear answer for how long footage sits in a database or who else can query it. "Safety" branding aside, a system that nobody is watching closely is exactly the kind of system that invites misuse.

If you want to see how far this network has already spread near you, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on a local deployment, our take-action page has concrete steps for raising it with your city council before the next contract renewal.